Injuries, Uchikomi Combinations, Hane Goshi, Harai Goshi

In my last post I mentioned that I had a sore Achilles from a recent road run.  Well, so much for it being a minor injury, one month later and the it's still very sore.  I say that but having just returned from the Osteopath I have a range of stretches to try, plus a new support, so I'm hoping to see some improvement soon.

Less encoraging is an injury I suffered to my big toe joint.  I picked this up about three weeks ago during a Randoori session with Sean, the 15 year old Green belt.  I'm not quite sure what happened, if I recall it was a clash of feet, but I do know that it hurt like hell.  After icing it for weeks on end and stupidly still training on it, the damn thing is still swollen and painful.  Well this morning, I went to the hospital to have an X-Ray, I was convinced that I must have fractured a bone somewhere. But no, nothing, the doctor said its probably just a strain and to keep icing it, that's good news I guess, but it's three weeks and counting and it still hasn't healed...

Anyway, I realise I train a lot, four to five times a week and I'm relatively fortunate that most of the injuries I've picked up during my travels, bar a badly sprained ankle about three years ago that kept me out for four months, have never kept me out of action of any significant length of time.

Injuries are part of the game, so last night I strapped my ailing feet up and trained anyway.  There were six of us in the class which meant getting a lot of attention from Stuart the Dan grade.

We first went through a series of Newaza holds and pins which included Kesa Gatame and an escape, Kuzure Kesa Gatame and an escape, so on and so forth.

We then practised some Uchikomi, but this time practising a combination of throws.  One of the combo's I tried was Ouchi Gari to Uchi Mata.  Apparently this is Stuart's favourite combination and he has a very similar build to me.  I took to this really well and of course I need to brush up on my technique, but it's certainly something to work on.

Stuart then introduced two new throws to us Harai Gosho and Hane Goshi, the latter I have actually been working on during the last few weeks:






These throws seemed to work great for me, particularly Harai Goshi. The entry is very similar to Uchi Mata and it's certainly one to work on.

My injuries prevented me from any Randoori and it will probably be that way for the new few weeks, nevertheless I learned a lot and proved that if you are injured you can still gain a lot from a class.